Leroy Luetscher was working in his back garden when he dropped a pair of pruning shears, which landed point-side down in the ground. When Luetscher went to pick them up, he lost his balance and fell face-down on the handle. The handle penetrated his eye socket and went down into his neck, resting on the external carotid artery. Half the shears were left in his head, while the other half was sticking out.

Mr Luetscher was rushed to the hospital, where surgeons removed the shears and rebuilt his orbital floor with metal mesh, saving his eye.

Doctors say Mr Luetscher still has slight swelling in his eyelids and minor double vision but has otherwise recovered.

Take a look at an exploded skull sometime, it’s pretty nifty. The floor of the ocular orbit is made of some really thin bones. They break easily, which tends to keep the eye intact. The handle then went down behind the zygomatic arch, which is the cheekbone, and then down into the neck. That area beneath the zygomatic arch is all basically either empty space (oral and pharyngeal cavities) or meat and cartilage. He’s super lucky that the handle didn’t rupture the carotid artery, otherwise he would have bled out in minutes. It and the jugular vein are essentially the only really important things in the neck, other than the spinal cord which is much better protected.